The Balinese suffer enormously under corrupt
and unlawful Indonesian rule.

It
never ceases to amaze me how wonderful, decent human beings can
smile in the face of such economic and spiritual suppression plus
rampant civil and human rights abuse routinely conducted by the
Indonesian authorities and businesses. It also amazes me just
how people who say they love the Balinese both are blind to and
in reality too often contribute to their suffering. I genuinely
love the everyday Balinese, wonder at how so many can remain decent
law abiding people in the face of such adversity and sincerely
believe what I have done in the past and do with this web site
is for them more than anything else.

The more time I spent in Bali the more I loved the Balinese and
became disgusted at what the non-Balinese were doing to both them
and their precious tropical island.

Surrounded
by crime where certain elements of Balinese society will break
into a young family’s empty house nearing the end of its
construction and hence still unoccupied just to steal 2 diapers
and a bottle of water. Where old widows without the benefit of
a supportive family or a social welfare system have the chickens
they rely upon for food stolen routinely by unemployed youths
which they sell in order to buy the highly addictive cigarettes,
which would be banned in most other countries, produced in Indonesia
where the average age to start smoking is 7 years old. Where children
are routinely sold into domestic service or worse, prostitution
where boys and girls as young as 11 years old are offered for
rent in brothels (night butterflies, like the sex worker in the
photo to the right) operated by police officers. The price of
a baby in Bali is generally linked to the cost of a new motorbike.
Many childless Javanese couples come to Bali to buy their babies
there because they believe the quality is better. Some of these
babies get lucky and go to caring homes. In Eastern Java where
baby prices are lower, newborn babies are often dumped, often
terminally. The west made a huge story out of the baby dumped
in a plastic bag and then thrown into an English river, but such
events are commonplace in Indonesia.

A
perfect example of how the Balinese people are abused by the corrupt
Indonesian system and how even well meaning foreigners actually
de facto add to the problem is David Booth who runs the East Bali
Poverty Project. I can almost hear the Neanderthal screams of
anger now, but bear with me, I am not saying eminently humanitarian
Mr. Booth and his project do not do great deals of good, I am
just going to point out how they also unwittingly contribute to
the problem they seek to solve because Indonesia is so corrupt.
Amongst many other programs, the East Bali Poverty Project helps
the poverty stricken Balinese in rural areas avoid a totally unnecessary
and nasty dehabilitating disease called “goiter” which
come from iodine deficiency (see picture left). The trouble is,
David Booth by helping the Balinese avoid such suffering is also
letting nasty corrupt Indonesia off the hook.

David Booth is a rarity in that unlike most of Bali’s expatriate
community he actually does something and something substantial
to help the people of Bali. David has helped the poor of Bali
in areas far away from where the selfish tourists lap up all their
economic superiority can buy them. David Booth helps the impoverished
out of tourist's site Balinese of NE Bali grow crops such as potatoes
instead of the Cassava they used to grow which actually depletes
what iodine they got elsewhere. But in reality and with no disrespect
to David Booth, by helping the poor he is actually helping the
corrupt. If it were just a matter of farming practices that would
be one thing, but it is not.

The real problem of iodine deficiency in Bali and Indonesia as
a whole is 100% corrupt state made. You see, health problems from
iodine deficiency have been known for years and that is why you
see “Iodonized Salt” everywhere in Bali. To make sure
the population got the iodine they needed, the Indonesian Government
followed International health recommendations and made it law
that iodine had to be added to salt. Because every Indonesian
uses salt (often too much), this would make sure everyone including
the poverty stricken people of North-East Bali would get sufficient
iodine to avoid goiter. So why do these poorest of Balinese get
goiter when their salt is Iodonized? The reason is corruption;
there is no iodine in their salt even though the packet says there
is and even though legally there has to be. Because Iodine is
significantly more expensive than salt, Indonesia’s salt
manufacturers do not add the iodine they are meant to, to save
money / make extra profit. There are government inspectors of
course, but like all government officers they are as bent as they
come, so they take bribes from the salt manufacturers to turn
a blind eye (source: BBC). The inspectors get away with corruption
because Indonesia is endemically corrupt from the top (Indonesian
president) down. Of course the health impact of some inhuman salt
makers and bent inspectors making a few dollars is mass human
suffering and a colossal cost to the Indonesian State from lost
productivity and health costs, because goiter sufferers can not
work and need medical treatment for life. Forgetting the human
suffering element, the financial cost of what these crooks in
industry and uniforms inflict on Indonesia is billions of times
the amount of the illicitly and incompassionately earned dollars
these callous men put in their wallets as a result. But there
is no common sense or sense of public duty in Indonesia because
there is no genuine justice and / or law enforcement in such an
endemically corrupt state.

In Bali there is no such thing as justice unless you hold a perverse
“Animal Farm” vision of justice where the wealthy
and powerful are astronomically “more equal” than
others and where the law enforcement service is ranked as one
of if not the most corrupt in the world by Transparency International;
where such corruption comes from the very top to the extent of
blatant extortion by senior members of the Indonesian Government.
Where increasing extreme Islamism under fraudulent feign of civil
law strips the Balinese of their religion and culture at the bequest
of militant Muslim purveyors of hate; just under 20% of Indonesia’s
mostly Muslim population, some 15,000,000 people believe the actions
of terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI's 2002 and 2004 Bali bombings)
are justified. That’s right, a very large percentage of
Indonesia’s dominant Muslims, historically known for their
jealous hatred of Bali (see: History
of Bali) believe it is right to kill Balinese and foreigners
in their Jihad to create a fundamentalist Islamic state throughout
the region (including Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei,
Singapore and Thailand!). When you see de facto Sharia law legislation
being introduced by a government which refuses to outlaw Jemaah
Islamiyah despite its BS PR about fighting terrorism, it is not
hard to see the RI (Republik Indonesia) is the enemy of Bali,
not its protector as it claims.

In schools now, Balinese children are forced to attend Islamic
“information” classes, yet if any Hindu, Christian
or Buddhist teachers were to let Muslim children know about their
religion they would be jailed; yes, this does happen. School children
are also bullied and extorted from by their own teachers who often
demand students buy their textbooks from them at high prices (where
the teachers make money). Children are subject to sexual and other
abuse across the community including at school, even at the hands
of their teachers. Children as young as 11 years old are forced
into marriage. Muslims are allowed to have 3 wives and often use
this special privilege to own and operate young prostitutes as
their pimps, not as their husbands. The western media makes a
huge deal whenever a western pedophile is prosecuted in Indonesia
but the problem is home grown and massive according to the UN
Secretary-General and UNICHEF (see
report here). It seems clear the Indonesian Government know
they have a serious child abuse problem as they banned female
genital mutilation a while ago but I could not find one prosecution
to show they meant it or were just feeding the world yet more
Indonesian BS PR. Child sexual and physical abuse is massive and
all pervasive in Indonesia, including Bali.

Tourism accounts for or rather, after the terrorist attacks and
other legitimate fears western tourists have regarding taking
their family on holiday to Bali, accounted for 67% of the island's
gross domestic product with over 80% of Balinese households (source:
BBC), which may mean over 90% of the adult population depending
on Bali’s tourism dollars. However, although tourism is
Indonesia’s third largest industry, Bali’s economy
equates to just 1.3% of the national figure while its vital tourism
is 4% (approximately) of the national GDP (source: US Embassy
Jakarta). Apart from the glaring fact that more money goes out
of Bali than stays in from tourism, it is clear tourists are extremely
important economically to Bali but much less so to Indonesia as
a whole.

So Bali’s tourism business is or rather until Jakarta de
facto allowed it to be destroyed was worth US$112,520,000,000
per year. Please look around Bali behind the scenes; the below
poverty line rural areas, the terrible condition of what few public
hospitals they have, prisons where you have to pay for the space
on the ground in a filthy overcrowded diseased jail cell you put
your mat on to sleep while the political youth wing of Golkar
push narcotics onto you, the state of Bali’s roads, the
lack of control of illegal effluence dumping around tourist areas,
11 year old prostitutes openly servicing Kuta, Legian and Sanur.
Where does or did all this money go to? It certainly didn’t
go to the Balinese hotel and travel industry workers as their
basic wage is around US$50 a month and they get sent home without
pay when guest numbers decline in a country with no social service
system. What makes me so angry about this last aspect is that
the hotel groups who send the staff home despite having massive
worldwide operations to cover the Balinese’s comparatively
meager wages during troubled times; also where it would be unlawful
in the hotel group’s home country to do what they do in
Bali!

This is also one of the perfect examples of how the Indonesian
Government publicly acts as though it is acting like a real government
when it is not; Indonesia publicly boasts it has a minimum wage
but what they fail to tell you is that is for full time workers
and businesses such as large hotel groups get around this by only
taking on part-time staff, even when those staff work full-time
hours. Even those Balinese who are lucky enough to have an employer
take them on as a full time worker and thus guarantee them a minimum
wage which yearly increases, the inflation rate (17.1% in 2005,
source: US Embassy Jakarta) more than eats that up. It is scandalous
that experienced Balinese hotel staff pay "agents" 11,000,000
Indonesian rupiah to get a job on a cruise ship in the Caribbean
paying crew 10,000,000 rupiah a month. First, the fact that the
Indonesian system is so corrupt Balinese workers they can only
get overseas work if they pay their life savings to some agent
shows you what they are up against. Second the fact they can earn
10,000,000 rupiah a month in the Caribbean but only 500,000 rupiah
in Bali is not explained by some equally vast difference in cost
to the guests. If anything Caribbean cruise ship cabins are more
competitively priced yet more expensive overall to maintain than
so called luxury hotel rooms in Bali, so why do the Balinese only
earn 5% of a cruise ship worker?

If all this was not enough, the vast majority of Bali’s
tourism industry cheat their Balinese hotel and villa workers
by stealing their money, by not paying the workers the service
charge revenue they are legally entitled to. If you see a price
(room rate, meal, etc.) including tax and service for a Bali hotel,
restaurant, etc. then 10% (11% less 1% the hotel / restaurant
can legally retain for staff breakages) of what you pay should
go to the staff at that business and be equally shared amongst
them; this very rarely happens. Many tourism businesses such as
hotels and travel agents look on that 10% or 11% as extra profit
for them. Even when they do pay it to the staff and withhold the
1% they are legally entitled to for breakages, they generally
deduct all breakages from the staff’s salaries anyway. Very
often the vast majority of the service charge goes to directors
and senior western salary level managers, even though they are
not legally entitled to any of it, on the basis the service charge
is distributed proportionately according to salary. As a consequence
hotel and other tourism industry staff go home with perhaps 5%
to 10% on average of the service charge money they should do.

Of course the travel industry in Indonesia cheats the people
of Bali in other ways too; they cheat hand-over-fist on their
(sales) taxes. The “Twin book system” is a well known
and established accounting method in Bali. Hotels, villas, travel
agents, etc. keep two sets of accounts; one shows the real profits
so the directors can rub their hands together, the second which
is normally half the real accounts is submitted to the Indonesian
tax man. Bali’s hotels, etc. cheat on their taxes which
after corrupt officials have "filtered" further goes
on public services. The tax inspectors of course know this goes
on and are able to play their role in the endemic corruption lead
system of Indonesia by imposing friendly spot fines without receipts
on anyone they catch. The consequence is that public services
in Bali such as hospitals and schools are appalling and totally
disproportionate with what they should be given the tax which
is claimed to be collected. Who benefits? Bent Indonesian businesses
and corrupt government officers. Who suffers? The very day Balinese
again of course.

Corruption has actually increased since Suharto’s fall
from power, not decreased; Indonesia's annual 17.1% inflation
rate is dwarfed by the percentage cost of corruption to Indonesia’s
economy. Anti-secular and constitutionally unlawful proxy Islamic
laws are on the increase. Singularly partial / biased “justice”
that favours the wealthy and Muslims while discriminating against
non-Muslims, westerners, the poor and those who stand up for justice
is becoming ever more apparent. If nothing fundamentally changes
for the Balinese, even if Bali’s tourism industry returned
to pre-terrorist attack levels (which it will not as things are
right now), it does not take much to see at best the Balinese
will never achieve their economic or cultural aspirations, at
worst it is a race between abject poverty and imposed fundamentalist
Sharia law. But with the likes of Rio Tinto, BP, Freeport and
BHP-Billiton making billions of dollars of profit out of Indonesia
(particularly Indonesian controlled West Papua), don’t expect
the US, Britain and / or Australia to change their real foreign
policies of supporting the corrupt evil state of Indonesia soon.

So if you claim to love the Balinese and / or be pro-human rights,
here is what you can do;

1) How to not just visit Bali but get the very best Balinese
experience going without putting a single penny into the hands
of their oppressors, read: Bali
Friendly Tourism

2) How to change the way western, especially English speaking
governments make the world a nastier unsafe place to travel, read
Foreign Policies